The UK Pirate Party has taken down its popular Pirate Bay proxy. While no official statement has yet been released, it’s believed that legal threats made by music industry group BPI are behind the unexpected move. The decision comes a few days after six individual Pirate Party members received a letter from the BPI’s solicitors. In addition to taking down the proxy, the Pirate Party have also pulled their legal battle fundraiser campaign.

After expensive court action earlier this year, a group of music labels achieved their aim of having The Pirate Bay website blocked by ISPs in the UK.

With the official site inaccessible via direct means, many Pirate Bay users switched over to proxy services. With millions of visitors a month, the proxy of the UK Pirate Party soon became one of the most-visited websites in the region.

Music industry group BPI objected to this alternative route to The Pirate Bay and asked the Pirate Party to take down their proxy service. When it became clear the Pirates had no intention of doing so, the BPI decided to send its lawyers after six individual party members last week.

This transformed the nature of the dispute and the stakes involved. The party members in question were not just fighting for their ideals anymore but also their personal belongings, facing potential personal bankruptcy through a grinding and expensive legal battle.

While it initially appeared that the Pirate Party was determined to keep their proxy online and fight the issue in court, they unexpectedly pulled the service offline Monday evening. Initially the site wasn’t loading at all but it currently redirects to a page announcing that more information will be released later.

TorrentFreak has been in touch with several key people in the party since Monday evening, but all said they were instructed not to talk by their solicitors. Initially we were told that a statement would be made public on Tuesday, but the party remained silent.

Considering the legal pressure applied by the music industry last week, it’s safe to assume that the sudden shutdown is related to the looming legal dispute. At this point it seems doubtful that the Pirate Party will fight the issue in court as the legal fundraiser campaign has also been taken offline.

We suspect that the solicitors of both the BPI and the Pirate Party are currently discussing options for resolving the dispute in a peaceful manner.The recent run-in with the music industry over the Pirate Bay proxy might not be the first. Several weeks ago TorrentFreak noticed that the UK Pirate Party changed its robots.txt file to contain instructions to Google not to index the site. The Pirate Party did not respond to our inquiries on this issue, but it’s not unlikely that the changes were made because rightsholders were overloading the party with takedown requests.When more information comes in from the UK Pirate Party we will update this article accordingly. The BPI was also asked for a comment on the recent developments but we have yet to hear back from them.Meanwhile, former users of the Pirate Party’s proxy are moving on to one of the many alternatives that remain online.

I opted for a VPN when they were blocking TPB and i dont even use TPB lol just thought its better save than sorry plus whats a fiver a month for added security? Yes ok Proxy is free but ive never really liked them lol.

That really doesn't mean much of anything other than you can't seize a single hard drive to take the site down. It is amusing to me that people are really so simple minded to think that the goal is nothing more than to take down a proxy or prevent people from getting to the site. That is not the goal. The goal is to hassle the people keeping the site up so much that they give up and take the site offline themselves. Everyone saying that taking down one proxy is a waste of time is missing the point and strategy entirely. The goal is to make it as cumbersome and annoying as possible so the criminals give up on their own.

If only the music and video companies would spend as much time and effort in making a new business model whereby people can afford to buy movies and music at a reasonable price, then places like the piratebay and others wouldn't get so much traffic, but then again you will always have people who want something for nothing. With all the crap they put on DVD's and Bluray its annoying to have to sit through all the trailers when you can get a pirated copy that goes straight to the film

Have to agree pirated version and instant access is much better than five to ten minutes of crap then the movie! Dont help that they release everything at different times around the world either, and its all so expensive and they ALWAYS show the best bits in the trailers (yes i hate that)...

Then again there has been quite a bit of research in torrent users and movies and music that the companies are just ignoring and saying all pirates are bad! Even though the research shows they are the bigger spenders, oh well least they are getting this nice image of being bullies and using tactics like the mafia something i wouldnt think ay company would want but seems they enjoy this and continue to use these tactics and until the law is turned on them with there fke dcma requests and what not nothing wll be done about them.